I've read a number of blog entries in the last week about today's remembrance of the September 11th attacks. A few have rightly commented that in some respects, the media's spin of the ceremony would seek to supplant our own, natural grief.
However, I'm grateful for the news today, because 2001 was the beginning of a dark time for my husband and me. In particular, the events of September 11th that year occurred atop a pair of personal tragedies that made it hard for me to connect with the greater tragedy of the terror attacks. I went numb. I shut it out. I focused on what I could solve; the problems in my own life.
I've always felt badly about that, because I wanted to grieve then, and I still do. But it gets harder, the farther it passes from the present, to mourn that day and what came after. I've promised myself that someday I'll go to the new 9/11 memorial in a good suit and sit for awhile, and find out what my own, natural grief actually feels like.
But until then, I'm glad I can watch the news, and cry a little, and offer what grief the distances of time and absence afford me.